San Antonio residents scorn Yelp for snubbing city on taco-related lists

Yelp is receiving a social media beatdown from Alamo City residents after the crowd-sourced review website snubbed San Antonio on two taco-related lists over the weekend.

In honor of National Taco Day, Oct. 4, Yelp ranked the top 100 taco spots in the nation and created a list of the country’s top 15 Taco Towns. There’s just one problem: San Antonio — the Tex-Mex mecca and home of the breakfast taco, according to many — is nowhere to be seen on either list.

Adding injury to insult, Yelp named Austin the nation’s best taco town, infuriating Texas Public Radio reporter Joey Palacios.

“I would like to organize a city-wide boycott of Yelp for this culinary injustice of listing Austin as #1 for tacos and not even having San Antonio on the map,” Palacios joked on X, the social media website formerly known as Twitter. “I’ll also be submitting a White House petition to correct this.”

According to Yelp, the company created its list of the top 100 taco spots by ranking taco restaurants using factors including their total review volumes and ratings. To create its list of the nation’s best taco towns, Yelp ranked cities by the number of consumer searches for “taco” between August 2022 and August 2023.

That method didn’t sit right with local food reporter Polly Anna Rocha, as noted in her rant published on MySA.

“There was no team of food critics, no star chefs and no carefully selected voting body to determine which restaurants made it onto this ranking, just numbers rolling around in a machine and a writer who interpreted the data,” Rocha wrote in her rebuttal to Yelp’s rankings.

For reference, Aroma Latin American Cocina in Henderson, Nevada, was ranked as the best taco restaurant in the nation in Yelp’s study.

Palacios and Rocha weren’t the only San Antonians pissed off at Yelp, however. X lit up with complaints from plenty of Texas taco fans.

“Lol my Houston food truck has better tacos than Austin,” user @TonyPeric quipped.

“I don’t think Austin makes the top 3 in Texas alone,” @imakethangs wrote.

“As an Austin resident, this is infuriating. San Antonio tacos or bust,” @Digital_Vix3n commented.

It’s possible San Antonio didn’t rank among Yelp’s best taco cities because Alamo City residents don’t need to consult the internet to find a good taco spot. Rather, they drive to their neighborhood taqueria or taco truck.

Whatever the reason, deep down, San Antonians know these rankings mean nothing, Rocha explained.

“We don’t need to be included to be validated,” Rocha wrote. “I feel the San Antonio taco pride in my heart (and my belly) every time I visit Taquitos West Avenue, Original Donut Shop or Taqueria Datapoint.”

Subscribe to SA Current newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter| Or sign up for our RSS Feed

This article appears in Sep 20 – Oct 3, 2023.